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NAIROBI: Around 700 people have been killed in three days of election protests in Tanzania, the main opposition party said Friday, with protesters still on the streets in the midst of an Internet blackout.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to cement her position and silence critics in her party with an emphatic win in Wednesday’s election, in which her main challengers were either jailed or barred from standing.
But the vote descended into chaos as crowds took to the streets of Dar es Salaam and other cities, tearing down her posters and attacking police and polling stations, leading to an Internet shutdown and curfew.
With foreign journalists largely banned from covering the election and a communications blackout entering its third day, information from the ground has been scarce.
The main opposition party, Chadema, said clashes continued between protesters and security forces in the commercial hub on Friday.
“As we speak the figure for deaths in Dar (es Salaam) is around 350 and for Mwanza it is 200-plus. Added to figures from other places around the country, the overall figure is around 700,” Chadema spokesman John Kitoka told AFP.
“The death toll could be much higher,” he warned, saying killings could be happening during the nighttime curfew.
A security source told AFP they were hearing reports of more than 500 dead, “maybe 700-800 in the whole country.”
“We are talking hundreds of deaths,” a diplomatic source told AFP.
The United Nations said “credible reports” indicated 10 dead, in the first information released by an international body, while Amnesty International said it had information of at least 100 killed.
Multiple hospitals and health clinics were too afraid to talk directly to AFP.
Hassan had yet to comment on the unrest and local news sites had not been updated since Wednesday.
The only official statement came from army chief Jacob Mkunda late Thursday who called the protesters “criminals.”
In Zanzibar, a tourist hotspot with its own semi-autonomous government, a spokesman for Hassan’s Revolution Party (Chama Cha Mapinduzi: CCM) said the Internet would return when the situation calmed.
“The government knows why they have shut the Internet. There are people who have tried creating tension in Dar es Salaam and they have destroyed a lot of things,” spokesman Hamis Mbeto told reporters.

- Zanzibar ‘robbed’ -

In Zanzibar, the CCM had already been declared winner of the local vote on Thursday.
The opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, rejected the result, saying: “They have robbed the people of Zanzibar of their voice... The only solution to deliver justice is through a fresh election.”
A senior party official told AFP that ballot boxes had been stuffed, people allowed to vote multiple times without ID and their election observers kicked out of counting rooms.
At a meeting place for opposition supporters on Zanzibar, there was dismay and fear.
“There has never been a credible election since 1995,” said a 70-year-old man, referring to Tanzania’s first multi-party vote.
None of those interviewed gave their names.
“We are afraid of speaking because they might come to our houses and pick us up,” said one.

- Crackdown -

Hassan has faced opposition from parts of the army and allies of her iron-fisted predecessor, John Magufuli, since she took over upon his death in 2021, analysts say.
They said she wanted an emphatic victory to cement her position, and the authorities banned the main opposition party, Chadema, and put its leader on trial for treason.
In the run-up to the vote, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, including a string of high-profile abductions that escalated in the final days.
Much public anger has been directed at Hassan’s son, Abdul Halim Hafidh Ameir, accused of overseeing the crackdown.
ACT-Wazalendo was allowed to contest the local election in Zanzibar, but its candidate was barred from competing against Hassan on the mainland.

LONDON: The “gap is closing” between online Islamophobia and real-life hate incidents in the UK, the CEO of the government’s new Muslim community partner group has warned. 

It comes amid growing concerns over a rise in Islamophobia in the country, and as the British Muslim Trust launches a government-supported hotline for reporting hate crimes, The Guardian reported on Friday.

Anti-Muslim hatred in real life is “underreported and unrecognized,” Akeela Ahmed warned. Incidents can occur in day-to-day life, she said, highlighting one case where she was refused service in a shop while wearing a hijab.

She added: “It’s something I experienced myself ... People around me were being served but I wasn’t served.

“First you feel helpless, and then you second guess yourself … sort of gaslight yourself into thinking that it must have been something that you did wrong. (But) basically there wasn’t anybody else who looked like me in the shop.”

In July, the BMT was picked as a recipient of the government’s “combating hate against Muslims fund.”

In the months since, Ahmed has toured Muslim communities across Britain, encountering “fatigue” and feelings of “disconnection from central government.”

Part of the BMT’s mission is to research the impact of Islamophobic discourse on Muslims in the UK.

The group will “call on ministers if research showed social media companies are not being held to account” under existing legislation, Ahmed said.

“We’re not even just talking about content that could be racist or anti-Muslim in nature. We’re talking about content that is inciting violence, that is actually breaking the law.

“We would not be asking for any special favours or special measures just for Muslim communities. This is literally about upholding the law as it is and enacting it.”

Ahmed added: “I think Muslims are an easy target because they are visible. People like me who wear a hijab. Pretty much everywhere that we visited, people described feeling like they were experiencing levels of hate that their parents had experienced in the 70s and the 80s.

“And they expressed how they felt that whereas the older generations might have just been like ‘we’re going keep our heads down, we’re going to prove our worth, get on with our lives, not make a fuss’ — they felt that they were a different generation and they were doing all the right things.”

The UK government is considering a new legal definition of Islamophobia that is expected to “protect the freedom to criticize Islam” while combating surging anti-Muslim hate incidents.